Social Skate Foundation & Bob Burnquist visit Next Up Foundation

In late April, Bob Burnquist and the brazilian Social Skate Foundation’s founders Sandro dos Santos and Leila dos Santos made a visit to Next Up Anaheim. Sandro and Leila were visiting California while participating in a TV show from Brasil that heard about their contribution to their community and decided to highlight them to the entire nation. While they were here, Globo TV was working on remodeling the entire Social Skate Foundation’s building which was half of Sandro and Leila’s own home. Sandro has developed a skateboarding program that later on was established by the Brazilian Government for the Foundation For the Well-Being of Minors in Sao Paulo, which is a youth prison. The goal of that program was to help those kids “get up” from their “fall” and “try” again. Exactly what skateboarding teaches!

In 2005 Sandro invited Vina (Next Up founder) to join him in this program and help him run programs. That was how our founder Vina got into social work, through Sandro’s invitation. In January of 2006, Vina moved to California and three years later started his own non-profit inspired by everything he learned from Sandro.

It was a very special day having Bob Burnquist and Sandro with us. Sandro was the person who gave Vina the chance to change our communities and Bob was the first skateboarding reference to believe in Next Up’s mission. Sharing all these with our members was simply priceless. Thank you guys for coming out!